The Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869 were baseball's first openly all-professional team. The Cincinnati Base Ball Club formed in 1866 and fielded competitive teams in the National Association of Base Ball Players 1867 to 1870, the time of a transition that ambitious Cincinnati, Ohio businessmen and English-born ballplayer Harry Wright shaped as much as anyone. In 1969 Major League Baseball recognized those events officially by sponsoring a centennial of professional baseball.